My SoCalled Life
by Alohilani
Summary: Wuya finds it hard to pass the time when her minion is unavailable. Most self-entertaining activities require hands. - oneshot, set during season 1


A/N: Takes place during the first season somewhere. I dunno.

This was torture… unfair torture, torture inflicted upon her by a smooth, condescending madman in the name of 'good'- yeah, 'good', pff. She had long suspected that what Dashi called 'good' was just his own brand of self-indulgent pranking, turned towards socially acceptable uses.

But did it matter why she was what she was? She was here, with no body, staring at the clock, willing the slow, idiot numbers tochange.

Her will accomplished nothing. It was 2:37 AM, and it wasn't going to be 2:38 AM for another twenty-two seconds, however much she wished it.

The boy. (In certain moods she did not like to think of his name, for the short, sharp syllable only served to remind her of how low she had fallen.) The boy was her usual amusement. The boy was annoying, and the boy needed a lot of watching, which made him distracting. Only, the boy was human (solidly, enviably human) and humans slept, ate, bathed, used the toilet and did other things that made them unavailable for large amounts of time.

She had tried to talk the boy out of certain things, with disastrous results. If he did not eat on time he began to whine and carry on and claim he felt sick. He refused to listen to her occasional suggestion that maybe he didn't _really _need to go to the bathroom _right this minute _instead of whatever else it was that she wanted him to do (and that was probably for the better, really). And when she tried to keep him up all night, he was useless the next day- whiny, crabby, crying at the drop of a hat, complaining constantly, and trying to go to sleep anywhere he could sit down and rest his fool head when she was looking away for even a moment. She had had to give up.

At least he didn't sleep as much as other humans did. He would be up until one in the morning sometimes, working on some stupid invention. But he still _did _sleep and _any _sleep was enough sleep to be irritating. Why did people even need sleep? What good did it do them?

She turned her attention away from the clock for a moment, verifying that he was in fact asleep, though the snoring he was doing was a pretty good clue that he was.

Yes, he was asleep, tangled up in a hideous knot of blankets and teenager and drool. Ick. Suddenly she couldn't stand to be in his bedroom any longer. It was gross in here. Underwear and socks and discarded pants and weird little doodles of dinosaurs and robots and posters of band members and pictures of Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West and Napoleon and Chase Young- who she'd actually _known, _of course, and she wondered how Jack even knew who Chase was, never mind where he'd gotten pictures… whatever. It was weird, and stupid, and dumb, and she rose up towards the ceiling and drifted out through Jack's bedroom window and into the clear night.

There was no moon tonight, but plenty of stars. She drifted down the silent street and into another house. The grass and the trees waved and she could hear the rustling of wind, but her exposed, nerveless soul could feel nothing.

The couple that lived in this house was asleep as well. They were curled up on the couch in front of the big, inviting TV in their living room, not that she could, you know, hit the power button with her utter lack of material form.

The man and woman looked so happy, curled up together, heads on each other's shoulders, it was enough to make Wuya sick. She left the house.

There weren't very many houses on Jack's street. She found another sleeping couple (along with sleeping children) and a man walking back and forth in his kitchen holding a baby, something Wuya had no desire to watch. She had no interest in making her presence known and talking to the guy either. He'd just scream and run away. Maybe drop the baby.

There were many times when such a thing would have seemed worth doing but at the moment, all humans were beginning to get on her nerves. They were so solid. So… contented with their boring, plodding lives.

She veered away from the house, flying low over long grass at high speeds. She came to some kind of pond in someone's yard and plunged into it on a whim. She could see through the water clearly- she felt no need to breathe- fish swam through her, then turned and wriggled away as fast as their little bodies could go. She felt the only thing that she could feel at this point, the feel of their fishy life as it collided with what was left of her- cold, muddy, fishy, subsentient life. It was kind of gross.

There were no movie theaters open this late, or at least, none close enough to be worth her visiting. There were always other time zones, of course, but none of them seemed appealing.

She floated up to the top of a tree and hovered there for a moment, staring out at the starlit land. She didn't want to watch a movie, she didn't want to find some kind of performance or sports event or crime to amuse herself with, she didn't want to watch humans using their bodies and senses and having oh so much fun being corporeal.

It wasn't that she needed Jack, and it wasn't that she liked him, but when she felt like this, he was what she wanted. He was pathetic, and he was loud and distracting, and he lived a life of humiliation and failure and clear loneliness that made it seem like not such a desirable thing to be flesh. Not an important thing, anyway. Not something she couldn't do without, by any means!

But he was _asleep. _When she couldn't take one more minute of him, he wanted to chat. When she wanted to interact with him he wanted to _sleep!_

She watched the tree branches swaying in a breeze she couldn't feel, and she watched clouds drift across the sky, and she listened to the distant barking of dogs, and when she couldn't take it a minute longer, she lifted into the air and flew back towards Jack's house.

He was still asleep, still and silent and wrapped up in blankets so that only his face and a shock of ridiculous red hair were visible. The clock read 4:12. She'd amused herself for longer than she'd feared, but not long enough.

It was strange to see Jack so calm and quiet, strange to begin with because he was normally so loud and vibrant- even when he wasn't chattering, the way he held himself and the bright look in his eyes suggested that he _wanted _to chatter, and would soon be chattering again. It was made stranger to one who had not experienced this inert state in quite some time. It was strange to think that Jack would lie there insensate for hours and hours and then return to his normal self with no sense of the time passed. It didn't seem like something that could be natural and healthy- necessary, even.

He would often have nightmares and it was stranger still to watch him thrash and cry and moan when nothing at all was happening to him. Dreams were strange. Dreams were also something for her to watch (and mock).

She reached out a ghostly non-hand and let it slip across the surface of Jack's cheek. He moaned huskily and rolled away from her, sticking his thumb into his mouth.

A few months ago a touch from her in his sleep would have him suddenly awake and screaming and not knowing what was going on. A few weeks ago he would have at least started having a nightmare. Now he just pouted and sucked his thumb.

Was she losing her edge?

She swept through his chest- or at least, where she guessed his chest was under all these blankets. It paid off with a drowsy cry of protest.

She turned to see him looking at her through dull, puffy, barely-opened eyes. He made some kind of incoherent noise, followed by a mumble of "Wuya?"

"Who else would it be?" she demanded.

He rolled his eyes and wriggled back under the covers. "G'way."

She hovered by the side of his bed. All that was visible to her now was an ear. A pale ear with dirt behind it. Ecch.

Sometimes she wished she could touch him. Mostly she wished this because he had angered her and she wanted to strike him. Sometimes it just suddenly hit her that she could no longer remember what human skin felt like.

When she tried to touch him and went through him instead, what she felt was the force of his spirit… a bright, enthusiastic human spirit, young and full of energy. It was a feeling that was… both invigorating and repellant. She did not desire such closeness and the feeling reminded her of being alive.

Why should Jack have the privilege of life when she did not?

Humans did not appreciate life, how easy life made things, how precious life was. Humans did not deserve the gift of life. She would like to strip them all of their bodies. In lieu of that, she would like to watch them all be crushed to still death. Crushed by her cold stone children.

Jack was asleep again, breathing slowly and deeply. Breath was another thing Wuya could not remember.

She drifted to the window, looking out at the stars. She heard blankets shifting around behind her. Jack was not asleep. She'd misjudged.

"Hey, ol' witch," he yawned. "Did a new Wu activate?"

"No."

"Why'd you wake me up then?" His voice was muzzy and slurred.

"You looked so stupid and lifeless I was afraid you were dead," she snapped. "Go back to sleep."

"Aghh… it's always something with you. I never get a moment alone anymore." He laid his head back down on the pillow. "Don't you ever sleep?"

She used some restraint and all she said was "No." Although from the wary look he gave her, there must have been a world of meaning in her tone. And by 'meaning' she meant 'nastiness'.

He sat up, leaning against the headboard and looking her up and down with a frown. "So then… what do you do, just hang around my room all night? Because I'm not sure I'm okay with that."

"Jack," she scoffed, "as if I don't have anything better to do than watch you snore and drool. Every so often I drop in to see if you're done yet, is all."

"Oh…" He lay back down, though his eyes were still on her. "Well, I'm really not."

"Fine."

She floated out of the room.

Jack's mother was upstairs, asleep. She came home from work around 7 PM every day and made dinner for her son, who would go upstairs and eat it with her, leaving Wuya alone in the basement for about an hour. A boring, boring hour.

Wuya hadn't bothered to learn much about Jack's mother (like… her name) or what she did with herself. She had assumed she did mundane, boring things, but perhaps Wuya had overestimated how boring, because there was a man sleeping next to her, and he was not the man in the family portrait hanging in the hallway- as in, he was not Mr. Spicer, who was away on a business trip.

Hm. Did the boy know about this? He'd never hinted at it. Wuya studied the man in the bed. Dark, coarse hair, rugged, masculine features. Nah, no chance that Jack was illegitimate, Wuya had seen Mr. Spicer on one occasion and they looked eerily alike… minus some obvious age and pigment differences and the fact that Jack's father wore normal human clothes.

She considered talking to Jack about his mother's infidelity and decided that there was not a good reason for that at present. She would store up the knowledge and use it when and if it seemed useful.

She drifted down the hallways of the house, past family portraits she'd scrutinized a hundred times before- the typical couple-with-son picture, a few school pictures of a sullen, unhappy boy, and her particular favorite- a shot of Jack at about twelve years old, with a mouthful of braces and no hair dye or makeup. He looked absolutely miserable.

She looked at the photo for a few minutes, taking no joy in it. She had simply seen it too many times and she had teased him until he didn't react anymore.

She scared the family dog- supposed to be Jack's dog, but the dog hated Jack, would bite him whenever possible, and was mostly the domain of the woman- into peeing on the floor, which was more gross than funny. She stared for a moment at the kitchen- the boring, boring kitchen.

She headed back to Jack's bedroom. He was asleep again, tossing about and mumbling under his breath.

She hovered by the footboard. In truth, she _didn't _have much better things to do than watch him sleep.

It was 4:42. It would not be 4:43 for another 37 seconds, no matter how much she wished it.


End file.
